‘You guys ready to catch a fish?’

A hundred yards upstream a smooth concrete monolith spanned the river, diverting the bulk of the flow via a canal to a nearby hydroelectric plant. The balance of the river issued from the bottom of the dam into a broad pool that in turn emptied into a gentle rock-studded rapid, at the foot of which we stood.

“Hopefully this mist will clear before we get too far downstream,” I offered as I completed the check.

Two days hence this stretch of river would be closed to fishing for winter, to enable the rainbows that ran up out of the lake to reproduce without hindrance.

Regulations forbade fishing from the raft. Merely a mode of transport, I had in mind three or four places to eddy out and, beaching the boat, fish from shore. The mist, while adding to the primeval spectacle of the river,would make staring into the depths more difficult. Whoever saw the other first – angler or fish – generally held the upper hand.

The two fishermen sat up front of the raft, and I pushed out into the flow. Boulders loomed out of the mist as we moved downstream, the river flowing its serpentine course through tall cliffs of river rock mingled with compressed layers of pumice, ash and clay. In many places studded with ferns and creepers, these cliffs often oozed trickles of water that seeped and fell into the river in tiny waterfalls, some already sporting icicles in their shaded reaches.

Multiple rapids were interspersed with long, slow pools. In these, an occasional fish, lying deep, would ghost out of the way of the approaching raft, a dark torpedo gliding against the gray river bottom.

As we floated, I worked through the logistics of the day. A few weeks away from the shortest day, we would not want to be on the river any later than 5 p.m. Two hours would be taken up in getting to the takeout, another hour for lunch, rigging rods and setting up at each stop. That left about four hours of line-in-water time, four hours to hopefully bring a fish to each angler’s net.

The rainbows would be lying deep. With their minds on procreation, eating would be relegated toward the bottom of their list of priorities. Rarely did one come across an actively feeding fish at this time of year. The trick would be to locate a lie where multiple fish sat on the riverbed, waiting for nightfall when they would continue their journey upriver to their spawning tributaries.

As well as fishing from the raft, regulations forbade us adding weight, in the form of split shot to the line, to help the flies sink. This could be circumvented by the use of what we termed “depth charges” –heavily weighted nymphs that sank like a stone. The challenge lay in casting such a rig without breaking a rod or the back of your skull.

The requisite technique, requiring a well-timed, open-shoulder cast, was called either “chuck and duck” or “heave and leave.”

In general, a long cast was required – get too close to the fish, and they would vanish before your eyes. Given their lack of interest in feeding, the fly needed to be put right on the fish’s nose; otherwise they couldn’t be tempted. This meant estimating the depth of the lie to within a few inches.

All these variable played through my mind as we moved downriver, the fishermen growing more anxious with each pool we drifted over. I could read their minds: Why didn’t we stop there? That looks like a good spot. Did you not see that fish? It was huge!

“Mother Nature has treated us to a special day,” I offered, in a subtle attempt to turn their attention to the things that really mattered. Another day at the office had begun, another day where only a handful of the multiple variables were under my control. The first of the pools I had in mind to stop at came into view out of the mist.

“You guys ready to catch a fish?” I asked.

Hayden Mellsop is a Realtor with Pinon Real Estate Group and a former fishing guide.